HEY LOOK! SNAPE VIGNETTES!
by Sarah Noble
Summary: For some reason, you wanted them, and for still another reason, you asked for them. More vignettes of the Man himself.
1. Habanera

Hey look, new vignettes!  
  
Yeah I been puttin them off, but I got a good reason. I totally couldn't think of any. That's my reason. Also I been busy on my comic book, which you can buy from Tokyopop this winter. It's called Bizenghast. Buy it or suffer the wrath of Balloonenstein.  
  
----------------------------------------------------------  
  
SEVERUS SNAPE CAN'T FIND HIS DAMN OPERA GLOVES  
  
"Where the hell did I put my damn opera gloves?" Snape roared as he angrily tossed drawers out of his bureau. He stopped and frowned at the wall intently.  
  
"I HAD them..." he said slowly, "when I stepped out with lady Eva Blackwell at the first night of Tosca in the Globe...but that was weeks ago! WHERE ARE THEY?!"  
  
He was halfway through a pile of dirty laundry in the corner when Professor Dumbledore stuck his head in the doorway.  
  
"Severus, your third-year class has been waiting for twenty minutes in the dungeons," he informed the raging man with the dirty laundry strewn all over his room. "Were you actually planning on teaching them anything today?"  
  
Snape paused. "Hey," he said finally, "how bout that. I'm not an opera singer! I'm a teacher!"  
  
Dumbledore stared at him silently.  
  
"It's the hair," Snape said weakly. "I got confused."  
  
"Please don't fire me," he added.  
  
Five minutes later, he was singing Carmen's Habanera to his third year class. Ten minutes later and halfway through holding the A above C, he was fired. 


	2. Indigo Vicious

SEVERUS SNAPE DOESN'T NEED ANY HELP WITH HIS HAIR, THANK YOU  
  
"No seriously, that's fine," Snape said as he tried to squeeze by a knot of salesladies outside Indigo HairCare. All he wanted to do was go to Gamestop and buy a new copy of Grim Fandago. But somehow, the mall always had it in for him.  
  
"Excuse me? Sir? Sir?" a perky blonde in a pink apron waved a bottle in Snape's face. "What YOU need is some of THIS. It's a toner and a relaxer all in one!"  
  
"You're an idiot and a moron all in one. Get out of my face," Snape muttered. But instead of moving, the swarm of women dragged Snape into the boutique and slammed him into a tester chair.  
  
"Sir, we've watched you walk by this store every Thursday on your way to Hot Topic, and frankly, we're concerned for your hair," the blonde woman said. "Also your general wardrobe. And nobody in their right mind wears Aqua Velva anymore. Consider this an intervention."  
  
"It's for your own good," a brunette with a snub nose added. She waved a vial of Frizz-Ease menacingly over his head.  
  
"I just want to play Grim Fandango!" Snape shouted stubbornly. The saleswomen closed around him in a circle, bearing conditioners and chanting.  
  
Ten minutes later, Snape emerged from a smoking and recently exploded boutique, pocketing his wand.  
  
"I don't need any help with my hair, thank you," he muttered. 


	3. Volleyball

SEVERUS SNAPE EITHER DOES OR DOESN'T GO HOME FOR THE SUMMER  
  
"Man, I can't wait to get home," Snape laughed as he packed his things into a strong valise and threw it out the window and onto the lawn. "I'm gonna fix up the veranda, do some gardening, hex my neighbors, bake cookies..."  
  
He paused a moment to watch a few teachers gathering outside in a crowd. Wondering what could be the matter, he strode swiflty out onto the lawn.  
  
"What's going on out here?" he demanded of the nearest teacher.  
  
"Volleyball, Severus," Professor Sinistra said, her face obscured by a plastic visor hat as she drove a net stake into the ground. "Whose team do you want to be on?"  
  
"Volleyball?" Snape repeated. "Isn't it a little late for that? Why is no one busy packing to go home?"  
  
Several teachers stopped and turned to look at him from where they had been drawing the out of bounds lines.  
  
"Home?" Flitwick echoed. "We don't go home, Severus. You haven't been home in years, remember? We live here at the castle."  
  
"Seriously?" Snape said. "No way. You're messing with me. At least one of us HAS to go home for the summer. I mean come on," he continued. "You can't actually mean we all became teachers right out of our parents' basements and don't HAVE homes! Or families or spouses! What, Hogwarts is run by a staff of homeless virgins? That's crazy, right?"  
  
He looked around at the others. "Right?" he said again.  
  
MacGonagall cleared her throat noisily in the silence. "Move your luggage, Severus," she said firmly. "It's smack in the middle of the skeeball range." 


	4. Not Fired!

SEVERUS SNAPE ABSOLUTELY, COMPLETELY, UTTERLY AND WITHOUT RESERVATION HATES HATES HATES WHAT YOU'VE DONE WITH THE PLACE, AND IF YOU'D CONSULTED HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE INSTEAD OF FLYING OFF THE HANDLE AND HIRING ANY OLD INTERIOR DECORATOR TO REDESIGN HOGWARTS WITHOUT REGARD FOR WHO MIGHT HAVE MORE EXPERIENCE IN THE LONG RUN, YOU WOULDN'T HAVE THIS PROBLEM, NOW WOULD YOU?  
  
"You don't even like the Star Wars curtains in the main hall, Severus?" Dumbledore asked mildly.  
  
"I QUIT!" Snape yelled, punching a hole in a nearby door. 


	5. It Begins

SEVERUS SNAPE FIGHTS BACK  
  
A sixteen year old girl in clumpy white face makeup and chalkily scrawled black eye kohl stared vacantly into space behind the register at Demonatrix, the new store in the mall for losers who wear black and pretend to be bigger losers in order to forget what gigantic losers they are.  
  
The salesgirl twisted her purple-streaked black hair around one finger and watched the clock. At precisely 9 p.m., she punched out for the night and headed to the parking lot, smoking a clove and checking her voice mail to know who to ignore at the club that evening.  
  
Her life was much like that of any sixteen year old goth girl who only cared about images and didn't actually appreciate the meaning behind the fashion and lifestyle movement she now lived and breathed. She collected Invader Zim merchandise, listened to jrock without knowing a word of japanese and regularly wore striped knee socks and vinyl in blazing hot summer weather because she felt insecure in everything else. Her name was Janet Volkert, but she preferred to be known as Misato Bloodbane online.  
  
Janet rounded a corner at the back of the building into the employee parking lot. A swift THUD ensued and her unconscious form stretched out on the sidewalk. It was quickly and expertly wrapped in a tarp and thrown into the back of a truck full of vegetables headed for Illinois.  
  
A man in black stepped out of the shadows with a Louisville Slugger bat clenched tightly in one hand. As the trucked pulled out of the parking lot, he threw back his head, bared his fists and roared at the heavens.  
  
"IT BEGINS!" Snape screamed into the night. 


	6. Pain and Torment

SEVERUS SNAPE IS IN KIND OF A WARHOLIAN MOOD TODAY

The breakfast table upon the dias in the Great Hall was silenced that morning.

"I know now that I have never, and will never, be able to once more enjoy the light of a summer morning, or the dawn of a new day," Snape said quietly. "Mine is a stake far higher than others' and played less cautiously than I should have done. For this, I pay a retribution."

He sighed. It was a sigh of bitter remorse.

"If I had known then what I know now..." he continued in a soft voice tinged with regret, "perhaps all of this might have been avoided. But too little, too late."

He stared at his bowl of cereal, as if divining answers to the fututre. But none came. He had added the milk too soon. The cereal was soggy.

"TOO SOON!" he repeated in pain.

"Eat your goddamn rice crispies, Severus!" Dumbledore shouted from the other end of the table.


	7. Update at the Front

SEVERUS SNAPE AND AN UPDATE AT THE WARFRONT

The club was a mess, to say the least. Vinyl boots and slashed corsets lay in ruins everywhere. The mirrored and gloomy dance floor lay littered with hair extensions. One of the Bose speakers was clearly on fire.

It had all begun so innocently, like so many Thursday nights before it. The club had opened at nine p.m. for Goth Nite. At ten-thirty precisely, the crowd of people who had been hanging about outside since nine but wanted to appear fashionably late, entered en masse. Make-up was checked and re-checked in the smoky mirrors along the wall. Ordinary drinks mixed with black and red food coloring and given silly names were ordered. That one chick who never dances with people and then goes home to complain that nobody dances with her was sitting on one of the speakers, staring in complete pretend absorption at a concert poster on the wall from 1998.

It was at exactly the moment when Monica (also known as Hybree Icelust) had flipped her hair over her shoulder dramatically and turned to fix her scummy ex-boyfriend with a penetrating stare of pure enigmatic evil, but her white-out effect contact lense suddenly slipped and she ended up blinking very hard and weeping her mascara all overself while her pupil apparently pointed towards something floating up near the ceiling.

It was in precisely that moment when the man entered the club.

At first, he merely stood there, unobserved, seemingly oblivious of the man who was trying to stamp his hand. Then he stepped forward onto the poorly-lit dance floor, where several people were either writhing from chigger bites or trying to weasel out of their pvc outfits without using their hands and doing a very bad job of it. This counts as dancing, but only if you're very mysterious and have vague and disturbing connections to the underworld. No, not the underworld like the MAFIA, you stupid simpleton. The underworld like, you know, as in DEATH and stuff. Like totally having evil, like, POWERS, but nobody else knows what they are, they just know you're like really really powerful and they're all scared of you but also the hot ones want to make out with you, only they can't because you're all uncaged and dangerous and stuff.

Snape cleared his throat.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, then stopped. "I guess that takes in most of you," he added as he looked around. Several people looked up from where they had been vaguely waving their arms to the music with the utmost concentration. Snape frowned at them and looked away.

"I have only one thing to say to each and every one of you so-called goth chicks tonight," he continued. He paused a moment, then filled his lungs deeply.

"FREE BLACK STICKERS!!" he bellowed. The door of the club opened to reveal a flatbed truck filled with clever slogan stickers from Hot Topic, row upon row of them coating the inside of the truck.

There was a deathly pause. As one, the women in the crowd tore through the club, stampeding each other in order to be the first on the truck. Clothing and accessories went flying. So did the chick nobody ever dances with.

The last goth chick having trampled her way onto the truck, Snape turned, produced a remote control and pressed the red button. The truck's sides folded outward and closed around the bed of the truck. The steel box lifted up vertically and began smoking at the bottom end. PROPERTY OF NASA was stamped in lead on the side of the box, which started vibrating as the outpour of burnoff increased near the base. A countdown began echoing from somewhere.

"TO THE MOON, ALICE!" Snape laughed maniacally, dancing around the impromptu launchpad. "WHAM! POW! ONE OF THESE DAYS, ALICE! RIGHT TO THE MOOOOON!!"

More events as they occur.


	8. Your Mom

SEVERUS SNAPE AND AN ACTUAL LATE-NIGHT DISCUSSION

One lovely morning in Shibuya, Tokyo. Three in the morning, to be exact. A drunken journey back from a karaoke bar for Sarah Noble and friend.

"Christy, what do you think of Snape?" I say as we get ready for some shut-eye.

"I think...I think there's gotta be something that brings joy to that man's life," says Christy, as she tries to put her clothes on a chair and somehow misses.

"I think I know what it is..." I say slowly.

SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND

A brown parcel arrives by delivery owl to the table on the dias of the main hall.

"Thank you, that will be all," Snape says curtly as he pays the owl and secretes the package under his chair. The whole affair seems too simple, too perfunctory. The other teachers are curious.

'What's in the box, Severus?" Professor Flitwick asks cheerily, attempting to lean over and get a better look at it.

"Your mom, now get lost," Severus snaps and quickly heaves the box out of sight, under the table. After breakfast, he snatches up the parcel and strides out of the room, the box hidden deftly under one wide sleeve. He hurries past students and staff alike on his way to the dungeons. Slamming the door of his office behind him, he locks it.

Placing the box on his desk reverently, Snape glances around in an obvious apprehension of being observed. He checks under his desk. Behind shelves. In the tea kettle. No one is present save himself...and the box.

The paper has been torn off eagerly. The box is open. The protective padding from inside has been removed and thrown on the floor. He reaches into the box and carefully draws out...


	9. Pawlock Holmes

SEVERUS SNAPE AND SOMETHING THAT I SWEAR TO GOD WAS VERY FUNNY AT THREE IN THE MORNING WHILE DRUNK

...a small ceramic cat.

"Hewo, Mistah Twinklepaws, isn't you the cutest THING, yessss you is! YES YOU IS!" Snape cooes idiotically at the hideously adorable ceramic figurine. A small felt cap with bell trim rests on its head. A velvet bow is tied around its ceramic neck.

The Ceramic Kitten of the Month Club has done its job well. Master Twinklepaws is now in Snape's possession. His rare "Cats of Christmeows" collection is now complete. This one shall go in the cupboard with the others.

At the press of a button, the shelves of peculiar and pickled potion ingredients swing back to reveal row upon row of ornate curio cabinets, each with its glass shelves filled to collapse with teeny tiny itsy bitsy oh-so-precious ceramic kitties. The irony should be palpable at this moment. If it's not, please adjust your monitor settings.

"No one must ever know," Snape hissed to himself as he placed his newest acquisition among the others. Here now, is the complete Cats of Christmeows limited edition set. Over there, the Belles of Buckley Meownor House. Three rows down, Puss-in-Boots, Rapurrzel and Fur White. A shelf to the left, Fluffums Dupin, Miss Meowple and Pawlock Holmes. All have been carefully and painstakingly collected, arranged and cherished. God only knows why.

"And now the collection is complete," Snape smiled inwardly. "Fan-freakin-tastic."

He pulled up a chair to the middle of the room and sat silently, basking in the imagined gleam of so much ceramic treasure.


	10. Your Mom Again

SEVERUS SNAPE KNOWS JUST WHAT HE'S GOING TO BE FOR HALLOWEEN

"Oh yes I DO," Snape smiled secretly as he stole furtively down the corridor on tensed feet. Being three o'clock in the afternoon and the hall full of students, this was not only a difficult task but a decidedly weird one to witness.

"You think you're better than me?" Snape asked aloud. We can only assume he's talking to us, or possibly the enigmatic narrator.

"Too right I am," he added. "Just you wait til halloween. My costume will blow your tiny muggle minds. You'll punch your mom in the FACE from surprise and awe."

We don't believe Sevi's costume could make us punch our mom in the face. Our mom is a very nice lady who clips every article about our work and saves them in a scrapbook. That's a very nice mom kind of thing to do. She also has her doctorate.

"I don't care if your mom's from the House of Lords," Severus interrupted. "She is totally going to freak when she sees my costume."

Thus spake the dorkface who is less educated and less hygienic than our mom. :P

"Hey!" Snape yelled.

TO BE CONTINUED


End file.
